Cultural History of Britain
Lecture 8
Timeline
 1660-1700: Restoration (Baroque and Neo-Classicism, Age of
Dryden)
 1660-85: Charles II
 1665: Great Plague
 1666: Great Fire of London
 1685-88: James II
 1688: Glorious Revolution
 1700-1740s: Augustan Period (Neo-Classicism, Age of Pope,
Age of Hogarth - beginning)
 1750s-1798: Age of Sensibility (Age of Johnson, PreRomanticism)
 1760-1820: George III
Overview: a Mixture of Styles and Trends
 Political culture: the gradual emergence of the modern
two-party system
 Philosophy: Early Enlightenment, religious dissent and
gradually emerging religious tolerance
 Architecture: organic development of Palladian into
Baroque and Neo-Classicism
 Great Fire → London rebuilt of stone, hygienic conditions
greatly developed, model of modern interior furnishing
 Music: Baroque
 Literature: mixture of medieval, Renaissance, Baroque
and Neo-Classical elements, forerunners of Romanticism
Political Culture: the Roots of the Modern Two-Party System
RIGHT
 Time of Civil War: Cavelier (royalists)
↓
 Restoration: Tories (royalists, Stuart Dynasty,
Catholicism)
↓
 19th century: Conservative Party
↓
 After the 1920s: Conservative Party
LEFT
 Roundheads
(Puritans,
parlamentarists)
↓
 Whigs (liberals,
parliamentary
monarchism)
↓
 Liberal Party
 Labour Party takes
over
(Liberal Party remains
the 3rd major political
force)
Neo-Classicism in Arts and Literature
 Neo-Classicism=broad tendency in literature and art (Habib, History 273)
over the 18th and 19th centuries (competing with Romanticism in the latter)
 Background:
 new reading audience (Habib, History 275) and market for arts (middle classes)
 heritage of Renaissance Humanism (Habib, History 273)
 Coincides with Enlightenment (the Age of Reason) in European thought
 General tenets and characteristic features:
 return to the Classics (Habib, History 276) – organic continuation of Renaissance
 objectivity, impersonality, rationality, decorum, balance, harmony, proportion,






moderation (Habib, History 273)
order, clarity, standardisation (Habib, History 274)
composition=rational, rule-bound process
rejection of stylistic excess, superfluous ornamentation, oversophistication (Habib,
History 273)
purity and hierarchy of genres (Habib, History 274)
central concerns: imitation and nature (Habib, History 274) – natura naturata
 imitation of the external world (human action) (Habib, History 274)
 imitation of classical authors (Homer, Virgil) (Habib, History 274)
 identification of nature and the classics ←special concept of nature (Habib,
History 274)
rejection of Baroque and Gothic (Habib, History 273)
Architecture: Inigo Jones’s Followers
From Palladian to Baroque
 Sir Roger Pratt (1620-85)
 Hugh May (1621-84)
 John Webb (1611-72)
Baroque interior (1675-84) at
Windsor designed by Hugh May
Typical temple portico of English
country houses (1651) planned by
John Webb
Baroque Neo-Classicism: Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723)
 Oxford education, Professor of




Astronomy
Turned to architecture in the 1660s
Journey to Europe (1665-6) – meeting
the Baroque master Bernini
1669: appointed Surveyor-General of
the King’s Works
Supervised the rebuilding of London
after the Great Fire
Saint Paul’s Cathedral, cruciform medieval plan
 Overall plan for rebuilding the city
following Roman models – discarded
for financial reasons
 Supervision of the reconstructions (52
new City churches)



Often centralised plan
Domes
Steeples added later
 Saint Paul’s Cathedral (1675-1710)
 4 great secular buildings outside
London
St. Stephen Walbrook, London, by Wren
Saint Paul’s Cathedral
1675-1710
Baroque Music: Henry Purcell (1659-95)
 Organist of Westminster
Abbey and the Chapel
Royal
 Wrote church music
 Wrote music for plays,
“dramatic operas” and a
chamber opera (Dido and
Aeneas)
Philosophy of Enlightenment I:
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)




Mathematician
Forerunner of empiricism
Materialist epistemology
Political philosophy
 Leviathan (1651)
 Advocator of absolutism
 Strong state
 Strong central power
 Authority
 Inspired by the devastation
and bloodshed of the civil war
 Popular and respected on the
continent (Germans)
 Rejection in Britain
(constitutional monarchy)
British Empiricism I: John Locke (1632-1704)
 Originally a physician
 Fundamentals of empiricist epistemology
 Essay on Human Understanding (1690)


Rejects Cartesian innate ideas
Tabula rasa
 Also wrote on education, economics, mathematics, theology,
Biblical exegesis, medicine, etc.
 Two Treatises of Government (1690)
 “father” of the liberal concept of the state (night-watch
man or minimal state)
 Later to be known as a system of “checks and balances”
 Basis for the American Constitution
Transitory Figures in Literature:
John Bunyan and John Milton
John Milton (1608-74)
 Controversial figure
 Politics: from royalist to supporter




of commonwealth, liberal
concerning freedom of speech, the
personal interpretation of the Bible
and divorce
Medieval picture of the world
(Paradise Lost, 1667) ↔ Protestant
(Renaissance)
Renaissance ↔ Baroque (heroic
epic on a religious theme, Divine
Providence)
Puritan influence ↔ rejection of
predestination, belief in free
individual will
Representative of Early
Enlightenment
John Bunyan (1628-88)
 Non-conformist preacher
 Several imprisonments
 Pilgrim’s Progress (1684)
 Allegory (medieval genre)
 Baroque elements
Theatre: Restoration Comedy
 1660: theatres reopened, their
Notable Restoration Comedies
number radically decreased
 Drury Lane
 Covent Garden
 Haymarket (opera)
 Covered theatres → increased




costs → theatre-going is the
privilege of the elite
Curtain – theatre as illusion of
reality
Actresses – erotic, immorality,
love intrigue as exclusive topic
Comedy of manners
Wit
 John Dryden, Marriage a la Mode
(1672)
 William Wicherly, The Country
Wife (1675)
 William Congreve, The Way of the
World (1700)
Nell Gwynn,
celebrated actress and
lover to Charles II
Timeline
1700-1740s: Augustan Period (Neo-Classicism, Age of Pope, Age of
Hogarth – beginning)








1689-1702: William of Orange
1690: Battle of Boyne (Ireland)
1695- no Licensing Act (free press)
1701: Act of Settlement, Hanoverian Succession
1702-14: Queen Anne
1713: Treaty of Utrecht – beginning of the First British Empire
1707: Acts of Union (Scotland)
1714-27: George I

1715: First Jacobite Rebellion (the Old Pretender, Scottish support)
 1727-60: George II
 1720-42: Robert Walpole
 1746: Last Jacobite Rebellion (Battle of Culloden, Bonnie Prince Charlie alias the
Young Pretender, support of Highland clans)
Age of Revolutions
 Agricultural Revolution
 Enclosures (earlier open-field system)
 Sheep, wool
 First wave of the Industrial Revolution
 Dramatic developments in textile industry (1733-85)





Flying shuttle
Spinning Jenny
Water frame
Spinning mule
Power loom
 1769: James Watt, steam-engine
 Revolution of Transport
 18th century: quick development of waterways and channels (transporting
goods)
 Building roads (John Metcalf and John Macadam)
 1829: Stephenson’s steam-engine
 French Revolution (1789)
New Audience: Culture for Urban Middle-Class Society
 Expensive forms of arts (architecture, horticulture, sculpture, to some
extent painting) remain the privilege of the aristocracy
 Middle classes




Literature
Clubs (emergence of new ideas)
Caffés (discussion of new ideas)
Journals


The Tatler (1709-11)
The Spectator (1711-12)
 Circulating libraries
 Education – idea of general elementary education emerges
 Lowest classes: charity and Sunday schools (reading, writing, religion)
 Secondary schools: grammar schools – low level
 Wealthier layers of society: tutors and governesses
 Decline of prestigious universities
 Dissenting academies (exclusion of dissenters from other schools)
British Empiricism II: George Berkeley (1685-1753)
and David Hume (1711-76)
Archbishop Berkeley
 Empiricist basis
 Tries to resolve the controversies
inherent in Locke’s empiricism
 “subjective idealism”
 A Treatise Concerning the Principles
of Human Knowledge (1710)
 “to be is to be perceived”
 Denies the existence of material
substance
 Preserves a metaphysical
explanation (existence of God) for
the existence of order and system
 Parallel with later phenomenological
approaches
 Theoretising vision
David Hume
 Empiricist basis, but takes its
conclusions to the extreme
 Scepticism
 Empirical knowledge does not




reveal the real nature or things
Only impressions
Ideas are even fainter impressions
Denial of a metaphysical explanation
No coherent, stable self – bundle of
impressions
 Major influence on German idealism
(Kant, Schopenhauer)
Literature in the Augustan Age
Key aesthetic concepts:
• Edmund Burke,
Philosophical Enquiry into
the Origin of Our Ideas of
the Sublime and the
Beautiful (1757)
• Neo-Classical norm:
beautiful
• Romantic ideal: sublime
• Picturesque – mostly in
the English (landscape)
garden
Genres and representatives
 Satire
 Alexander Pope, Jonathan
Swift, John Gay, Henry
Fielding
 Rise of the novel (as
opposed to Romance)
 Daniel Defoe, Robinson
Crusoe
 Henry Fielding, Tom
Jones
The Birth of English Painting: The Age of Hogarth
William Hogarth (1697-1764)
 Educated in Baroque




William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress (1732-33)
The Orgy or Tavern Scene

painting
Conversation pieces
Satirical vision of the age
Strong moralising sense
Series of paintings later
mass produced as
engravings
Forerunner of the English
caricature
William Hogarth, Marriage a la Mode (series: 1742-4)
Architecture: Neo-Classicism Proper as a Return of the
Palladian Style
Chiswick House (1723-9)
Horticulture: The Aesthetics of the Picturesque and
Emergence of the English Landscape Garden
 First propagators: William Kent
and Alexander Pope
 Outstanding landscape gardeners:
 Lancelot “Capability” Brown
(1716-83)
 Humphry Repton (1752-1818) –
coined the term
 Characteristic features:
 Reaction against the French
garden (replaced it on the
continent)
 Represented idealised nature
 Often inspired by paintings
(Claude Lorrain)
 Lake, lawns, groves of trees,
bridges, recreation of classical
(later Gothic) architecture
Lorrain and
Kent
“Imported” Baroque Music:
Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759)
• Baroque composer, writer of polyphonic secular and church
•
•
•
•
•
music (cantatas, songs, sonatas, concertos, operas, hymns and
anthems, etc.)
1714: settling in London (Georg, Elector of Hanover →
George I)
1727: naturalised British citizen
Wanted to popularise Italian opera in London, with little
success
Water Music Suite (1717)
Started to compose oratorios
• Messiah (1742) – major success
• 1749: Music for the Royal Fireworks
Timeline
1750s-1798: Age of Sensibility (Age of Johnson, PreRomanticism)
 1760-1820: George III
 1763: Treaty of Paris – end of Seven Years War, France
loses all its territories in Canada to Britain
 1775-83: American War of Independence
 1783: Treaty of Versailles – Britain acknowledges U.S.
independence, end of the First British Empire
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92): “Grand Style”
Beginnings of Academism
 One of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy of
Art (1768-92)
 Discourses – presidential addresses to the
students year by year, aesthetic
principles (1769-90)
 “Grand Style/Manner” (Discourse III)
 Originally applied to historical paintings
(no defects in a heroic character)
 Later to portraiture (full-length portraits
with props that convey magnitude, nobility and
sophistication, nature “perfected”)
 Basis of rigid Academic style, later to be
rejected by Pre-Raphaelite painters
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88)
Unique Combinations of Genre and Technique
 Early career
 London (1774-88)
 Landscape painter
 Perfection of his style
 Combination of landscape and
 Trained on the work of Dutch painters
portraiture
(Ruisdale)
 Opaque and transparent colours
 Bath period (1759-74)
together
 Fashionable portrait painter
 Influence of Van Dyck
Mr and Mrs Andrews (1748-50)
Gainsborough, The Mourning Walk (1785)
Cult of Sentiment – a Reaction against Neo-Classicism
in Neo-Classicism
 Sentimental comedy
 Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
 Dominance on stage until 1773 (counter-reaction: Oliver
Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer)
 Sentimental novel
 Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740)
 Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759-67) A Sentimental
Journey (1768)
Neo-Classical vs. Gothic (Romantic)





Neo-Classical
well-ordered
harmonious
simple
pure
set of cultural models
Dr Johnson
• Embodies the spirit of the age,
important rather as a personality
• Mediocre writer and literary critic
• Critique of Metaphysical Poets
• New assessment of Shakespeare
• Disintegration of Neo-Classical
norms, especially the “three
unities” and the illusion theatre
Gothic







chaotic
ornate
convoluted
excess
exaggerated
wild
uncivilised
Forerunners: Graveyard School
(Thomas Gray, Edward Young)
Horace Walpole, The Castle of
Otranto (1764)
Ann Radcliffe, Gregory Lewis, Mary
Shelley
Pre-Romanticism
(William Blake, 17571827)
Architecture: Georgian, Regency, Sham Gothic
 Georgian style: more comfortable form of
Neo-Classicism available for urban middleclasses, harmony of exterior, interior design
and furniture (Robert Adam, 1728-92)
 Regency: form of Neo-Classical style at the
turn of the century
 Neo- or Sham Gothic: return to Gothic
forms as a reaction against rigid NeoClassicism (second half of 18th century),
parallel with Georgian and Regency
Works Cited
Blamires, Harry. A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1991.
Gaunt, William. English Painting – A Concise History. London: Thames and
Hudson, 1991.
Gelfert, Hans-Dieter: Nagy-Britannia rövid kultúrtörténete. Corvina, Budapest,
2005.
Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism and Theory from Plato to the
Present. London: Blackwell, 2008.
Halliday, F. E. An Illustrated Cultural History of England. London: Thames and
Hudson, 1981.
Jenner, Michael. The Architectural Heritage of Britain and Ireland. Penguin:
London, 1993.
Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York,
London: W. W. Norton, 2001.
Morgan, Kenneth O., ed. The Oxford History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984.
Tarnas, Richard. A nyugati gondolat stációi. Ford. Lázár A. Péter. Budapest:
AduPrint, 1995.
Watkin, David. English Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992.